In the midst of a Monday night blizzard where it was tough to tell which end of Calgary was up and which was down, the picture wasn’t any clearer inside the Max Bell Arena.

The mighty Brooks Bandits — keepers of the No. 1 ranking in the Canadian Junior Hockey League with an eye-popping 44-2-2 record — were deadlocked 2-2 with the Alberta Junior Hockey League cellar dwellers, unable to separate from the 14-31-4 Calgary Canucks.

Rub your eyes. Click your heels, Dorothy. This was no mirage.

Eventually what should happen, happened when Airdrie’s Anthony Paskaruk — the most dangerous Bandit on the night — went wide around the Canucks defence, swung around the net and jammed a wraparound past courageous Canucks tender Colin Cooper — his 36 saves not quite enough.

Still, there were plenty of folks giving their heads a shake that the Canucks managed to steal a point off of a team that seems destined to repeat as AJHL champs, if not go all the way to the national title.

“I think this is a huge stepping stone for us right now,” said Canucks assistant GM/coach Craig Mohr. “This is my second year here and this is the first point we’ve got off Brooks. I think the biggest thing was the focus for the whole 60 minutes. We’ve played Brooks pretty tough sometimes, but they’re prone, like all good teams, all of a sudden you’ll look up and they’ll score like three in five minutes.

“We can definitely take a huge step forward from that.”

And ‘forward’ is the key word being bandied about in the Canucks locker-room these days. It’s tough to stay positive if you look back at seven straight losses, just two wins in the past 25 games and the fact that they’ve lost nearly all of their top players to injuries at certain points during the season (the latest was leading scorer Clayton Petrie, who took a knee in the second period on Monday and could be lost for the season).

“We can’t look and cry over it,” said Mohr, whose squad has been without top players Derek Thorogood (collarbone), Kirby Ruzesky (collarbone), Gianni Mangone (back surgery) and Jeff Wildeman (concussion) for most of this losing skid. “It’s what it is and we’ve got to go out and get points.

“This is a big week for us with Brooks, Camrose and then back-to-back with the Mustangs,” he added. “We’ve got to make some hay in those games. You never know. If we get on a run here, win three in a row, we’re right back in it and that’s got to be our goal.”

Also giving the club hope is the fact that they’ll play the Mustangs three times in the final stretch of the season — essentially an all-Calgary play-in series for the final playoff spot, except that the Canucks have to have all three.

CANUCK NOTES . . .Besides a 3-2 shootout win on Jan. 11 over Drayton Valley, the only other win the Canucks have since Nov. 11 was on Dec. 5 when they edged the Camrose Kodiaks 3-2 at home. They’ll host those same Kodiaks on Wednesday (7 p.m., Max Bell) before a crucial home-and-home series against the Mustangs (Saturday at Max Bell, 7 p.m. and Sunday at Father David Bauer, 7 p.m.) . . . Mohr said they expect to get Thorogood back in the linuep by mid-February, but Ruzesky is a longer shot to return because he had a plate inserted to fix his collarbone injury. Mangone is lost for the season and Wildeman most certainly is, too . . . With the plethora of injuries, the Canucks have been relying on affiliate players to fill the gaps, tapping all five local Midget AAA teams. They’ve already used Calgary Northstars D-men Deryk Sutherland and Zach Dietrich in nine games (max is 10) and were rolling with Owen Johnson (Calgary Buffaloes) and Jake Dube (UFA Bisons) against Brooks on Monday.

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Struggling Calgary Canucks buoyed by unexpected point against mighty Brooks

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